iTunes - What's the deal?

I'm pretty much willing to agree at this point that Apple makes good stuff. I personally have the 8 GB iPod nano, and I know plenty of people who have the iPhone and are very happy with it. But what's the deal with iTunes? Why can't they get it straight once and for all? I'm currently in middle of copying 30GB of music from an iPod to my computer (using ephPod), with the intention of formatting the iPod, and putting it all back on using iTunes, simply because there is no normal way of telling the iPod to repair its' corrupt library. That's right, there is 30GB of music on there, but the iPod can't see it. What a piss off. Now normally I would use a program like SharePod (http://sharepod.sturm.net.nz) or ephPod (http://www.ephpod.com), but they don't seem to be compatible with the new 160GB iPods, or maybe it's Windows Vista that's causing the issues. Either way, I just wish Apple would get its act together and finally allow us to copy songs from the iPod to the computer, and allow me to do something as simple as repairing a corrupt library.